Stories, National Dorfman

[Steve]

Saw the second preview tonight. Like Yerma with the brakes on, this tale of a 39 year old woman's panicked quest for a baby is hampered by too much middle class moralising. It is best appreciated as an acting masterclass by Sam Troughton, who gets to do six different characters with six different accents.

Some spoilers follow. . .

Where Billie Piper's Yerma would have blown up the whole world for a child of her own, Claudie Blakley's Anna is so nice that she considers everyone's feelings about her baby crisis above her own. She doesn't want to impinge on her boyfriend of three years, nor any of the slew of men she tries to convince to have her baby, and she finds anonymous sperm donors immoral because her baby might be scarred not knowing it's father.

This woman is a compendium of right-on middle-class thinking that will bore the pants off audiences. Luckily, Claudie Blakley is an immensely likeable genial presence, and Nina Raine throws her a few occasional bon mots.

But the truth is, her character has no believable impetus, and only drafting Tamsin Greig to play this woman's endless humiliations for laughs could have made her plight entertaining.

So, the heavy entertainment lifting all falls on Sam Troughton's capable shoulders, as he plays six successive men in her life, and all the fun of the production is seeing him bring them to life with different accents and attitudes. His London wideboy, Danny, is a genuine hoot, hyped up on ego and adrenaline, and I wish there had been more of him.

Troughton isn't the only actor playing the accent game, as four other excellent actors double up characters (Stephen Boxer, Margot Leicester, Brian Vernel and Thusitha Jayasundera) and also get to dabble in a little American here, some South African there, some Russian perhaps, and a little Australian.

This is a night of a thousand accents that would have Parsley screaming in anguish and insulting everyone involved, though there is sufficient entertainment and middle-class food for thought for an average night out.

This is unlikely to transfer, despite the combo of Nina Raine and Sam Troughton, who both recently saw better productions transfer to the West End.

So if you fancy knowing whether Claudie Blakley's Anna will continue her story by giving life, or whether Danny will continue to be the funniest of the 6 stories Sam Troughton is telling on stage, you'd better grab one of the offers that are bound to transpire in the coming weeks. Nina Raine is good with funny naturalistic dialogue, and there is a tender story here about a likeable woman who just wants to give life being given life herself by a believable likeable actor in Claudie Blakley.

3 stars will be forthcoming from every quarter except from the easily and grumpily bored (2 stars) and the oversensitive and morally minded (4 stars). 3 stars from me.

[jason71]

Any info on the running time?

[nash16]

Why do they put these boring Nina Raine plays on? Are there no other female playwrights?
Revive Tribes if anything.

[showgirl]

Oct 11, 2018 23:21:27 GMT jason71 said:

Any info on the running time?

NT website says 2 hours 20.  Please and thank you.

[jason71]

Thanks

[showgirl]

Blogger revstan went last night so she should post a review on her site soon.

[tmesis]

Well, when the best joke of the evening, that actually gets a round of applause, is about Ocado, you know this play is not going to change the audience's middle class demographic. I enjoyed Consent and this has a similar theme but it's a little 'one note.' There's no real plot as such; just a succession of conversations where Anna is trying to find someone to father her child. These conversations are extremely entertaining and funny though, with the whole thing zipping along its 2 hrs 20 mins.

What lifts the whole thing considerably is Sam Troughton. He absolutely, and hilariously, nails his multiple characters (all potential fathers) and it's worth attending just for him alone.

[peelee]

Very good. It's about a grown-up issue, is serious, yet has fun with the stories that people come out with, serious though they're being. Get a ticket and enjoy the experience.

[Deleted]

Oct 21, 2018 15:51:39 GMT peelee said:

Very good. It's about a grown-up issue, is serious, yet has fun with the stories that people come out with, serious though they're being. Get a ticket and enjoy the experience.

We have such different tastes! Just commented on your opinion of the film American Animals, which you hated and I loved. And now this. I suppose it’s what makes this Board so interesting.

[peelee]

cleoskryker, I didn't so much hate the film as become gradually irritated by its dawdling pace and focus on slacker-types, the film dawdling along with them. I found that eventually I was bored by it. In such situations, I often try to analyse not just what's wrong but what might have made it better — it's a way of getting something for my money out of the experience. This time, though, the pictures had become just lights moving on a screen, while I used the cinema darkness and comfortable seat to turn over in my mind something I was writing at home and had only part-completed. I have to do that sometimes while my companion absorbs herself in the film that she at least is happy to watch, and I never lobby to leave something even though we are so close after this many years that she senses when my mind is elsewhere and realises what I am usually doing mentally with my time. I'm that sort of bloke. She and I laugh about this afterwards. For this film, though, I was there on my own, gave it an hour, and then went home to watch some 'live' European Champions League football on my TV. American Animals got positive reviews, and if you and others loved it then I have no reason to argue with you.

I'm sorry that Stories at the National didn't do it for you. Not a great play but I found it fascinating even at the very early preview performance I attended. There is a lot in it, and in my time was approached by a couple of women, very good friends, about conception, so could identify with the protagonist's dilemma in this play. Though I wasn't like any of the male characters in the play, the responses from them seemed plausible. It's partly an age-thing, I suppose, and about life experiences. It's not a class-issue as far as I am aware, so 'middle class' this and 'middle class' that, as per other comments, doesn't lay a glove on this play. Nina Raine used her kind of egotistical, buzzy, literary family, as a possible model to help her write Tribes, I imagine, and this new play presents the kind of family that will have a range of possible choices and social acquaintances in an urban setting, to make this play true enough. As always, I recommend not what I like but what I like and think others on this board may like. For I am mindful that funds are limited and so people have to take informed risks. But not informed enough by me as ever to have people know beforehand the story, the subplots, etc. There is no one story in his play, but Stories. Let the audience see and hear them unfold!

[Dr Tom]

Saw this this afternoon, from a good pull out seat in the third row.

There is a tier either side of the stage, plus balcony levels (which must have a horrible view) at the two other sides. The seating plan when you book is rather confusing and a row of extra seats disappeared at some point during the day.

Pretty full. It’s one of those modern plays that believes you have to say the c word early and often. The Ocado joke still got the biggest laugh.

Decent enough play. Mostly linear but with a few timeline jumps to keep you thinking. Not all much really happens.

As others have said, it’s the Sam Troughton show.

I don’t see this as a likely transfer, so catch it while it’s running.

[Deleted]

Well. If you liked 'Yerma' but thought, "this could do with a few more giggles" then you'll love it. It's a bit rambly and all quite amusing in a BBC2 sitcom way but I couldn't engage with it properly though as despite Claudie Blakley's lovely presence, I just don't understand those women who desperately want a baby at any cost (just like 'Yerma' which I hated btw). Perhaps that's understandable as I'm clearly not a woman who wants a baby or has any children (they tend to cry when they come into my sphere and just as quickly stop when they leave it) but I just ended up finding Anna really rather irritating more than anything else. There are a few funny lines and there are some lovely supporting performances though. As everyone has mentioned Sam Troughton steals the entire show but I also really liked Stephen Boxer and Brian Vernel (who I'm finding always seems to be great value when he's in something).

There's a lot of swearing for those of a delicate disposition and I heard one man saying to his friend "I swear like a trooper but there's rather a lot of bad language isn't there?". Quite. On the plus side it's nice of Nina Raine to recycle the set of 'Consent' which shows a wonderful concern for the planet and there's a fabulous anticipation when another box comes swirling onto the stage like a dodgem car that it might just go flying off into the stalls which keeps things interesting but most delightfully, you get Thusitha Jayasundera giving us quite possibly one of the worst Australian accents I think I've heard in a long time. I think she might have given up at one point. I know I certainly did.

[Steve]

Oct 23, 2018 15:06:20 GMT peelee said:

It's not a class-issue as far as I am aware, so 'middle class' this and 'middle class' that, as per other comments, doesn't lay a glove on this play.

What I meant by "middle class" referred to the stereotypical inference that upper and working classes tend to bypass chattering morality, and get on with stuff. The constraints of society's morality don't tend to hinder upper class characters, cos their connections and money lead them to feel they can get away with anything, and at the other extreme, a lack of money, spare time and resources, as well as a general sense of exclusion from chattering society's conversation, also tends towards characterisations who haven't the time to faff talking about stuff.

Characters who DO stuff, and then pay the price for stuff they do, tend to be more dramatic characters than those who think things through carefully before doing them.

If, for example, Macbeth had been a play about a chap and his wife who made a list of pluses and minuses regarding the benefits and detriments of committing murder, including consulting with the families of murder victims to find out how they would feel if their family members were murdered, and then talked out the whole thing, and made a moral decision not to commit murder, I would call that "Middle Class Macbeth" aka "Macbeth that bores audiences to tears."

When Shakespeare does feature these types of moral characters, such as the three numpties who swear off women for their moral betterment in "Loves Labour's Lost", he makes the whole play about taking the piss out of them and their hypocrisy, rather than joining them in a pluses and minuses moral back and forth.

So my point about this play being "middle class" is actually an observation about a character who refrains from doing stuff to talk and talk and talk about it instead, when it's patently ridiculous, because at 39, her clock is at one minute to midnight, if genetic babies are as important to her as she asserts, and the faffing about for the entire running time seems not only overtly high-minded, but worse, undramatic. Shakespeare would have laughed this approach to plotting out of town.

That said, I am not saying Macbeth is a better person than Middle-class-Macbeth. He isn't, but he's more exciting to watch.

[Deleted]

Thought this was predictably dreadful

And WHO still
Goes to
Waitrose


Harrods food halls

All the way

[jgblunners]

I saw this last night and thought it couldn't quite decide what it wanted to be - a comedy about a middle-class woman and the various potential fathers of her child or a touching and thoughtful drama about what it means to be (or to want to be) a mother. The comedy scenes were on the whole very well written, but the scenes in which Raine was clearly trying to say something serious or make some kind of moral/introspective point were a bit rough around the edges and the naturalistic style of her writing started to falter. Good performances all round, though, particularly from Sam Troughton. Nice set and lighting too. 3 stars.

[andrew]

I'm not sure if Nina has noticed this, but she seems to have constructed a play without any actual drama. Actually perhaps she did notice, because she gets Claudie Blakley to shout for a bit every 15 minutes on rotation as if to simulate that there was some kind of tension at play. I don't mind a foreshadowing first scene, but when it has already spelled out the conclusion of the play, and there's little else in the show to hold your interest, the writer has made a mistake. "I hope we don't just get multiple scenes of her trying to convince men to become sperm donors" I thought, oh how naive I was. It just felt like we were going through the motions, waiting or the first character to re-appear again. And the stuff about the Russian woman and the child's role were clumsy and just seemed like a strained attempt to add deeper meaning to the show. It's odd as well because whilst this isn't a topic that I think about much, it feels like a weighty and emotional subject, the woman desperate for a child, desperate to be a mother, being disappointed by all the men in her life. Unfortunately the main character doesn't come across as tragic or sympathetic, she just comes across as rather annoying.

I did have a good laugh at certain bits, Raine is a funny writer and the actors were all comedically very good. I'd quite like my apartment to have the Nina Raine furniture system, the ultimate space saving technology. But the comparisons from Ryan and others to Yerma are painful, a recent play that has dived horrendously into this topic and gutted out it's insides in a Billie Piper roar of mud slinging and knives. It's OK to have a less apocalyptic telling of this sort of story, but some witty dialogue doesn't save this attempt from just being a bit boring and lifeless.

I also noticed that for a Saturday evening performance, after closing the gallery level they still couldn't fill the seats in the pit and circle. People aren't flocking in like they did for Consent. I'd like another witty and interesting Nina Raine zeitgeist play, it's a shame this wasn't it.